


Fear In Sobriety.

by fearless_seas



Series: The Three Trials of Jacky Ickx. [6]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memories, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 05:53:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14635439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fearless_seas/pseuds/fearless_seas
Summary: Jackie Stewart is trying to make Jacky Ickx chose to remember not forget.





	Fear In Sobriety.

**Author's Note:**

> Last one, here we go.

          It’s a few days later and you've already forgotten Ronnie’s scent. It was as if each day that crawled by, the light faded from your memory. But you recalled how many packets of sugar he put in his coffee, but not the taste of his lips (they ache as you think this). You wish they were here so they can wipe the pain from your cheeks and wrap you in a kiss. You crave him here because you know you’ll never feel the same again. You need him here so you can tell him what he wanted. All that he wanted. You cherish the peppered touch he once landed on your body. And, more than anything, you miss him. All you know is that his voice plays the strings of all your weaknesses; if one were to ask you what love sounded like, you wouldn't hesitate a moment.

        _"Him."_

          A week later you still haven’t left your room. You either sleep too much or not at all. It is then that Jackie Stewart is standing in your doorway. His shoes crunch over week-old broken glass as he makes his way towards the floor where you are laying with nothing but your briefs. The room smells dead, the air as an apocalypse and everything is broken (no more than you, however).

          “You look a fright,” he sits on the edge of the bed where the sheets are torn and places his hands in his lap as though he is afraid to touch anything (especially you). You have questions but you’re too tired to speak. “You don’t have to say anything, nothing at all.” Grateful is the only word you have to describe yourself. He leaves you on the floor for an hour and sweeps up the glass, he puts all of your clothes in the corner and moves about as silently as a ghost in an effort not to disturb you. “Come on…”, he assures, putting his hands behind your back and helping you onto the bed. He washes you off with a towel and hisses at the gashes on your hands as he bandages them up.

          “Thank you,” you whisper it from a parched tongue. It is the first thing you have said in a week.

          He places a finger to the line on your lips, “Don’t say a thing.” Jackie waits a few more hours before getting you to drink, a couple after that for you to eat.

          “Why are you doing this?”, you turn your neck towards him and he is sitting upright over you.

          He shrugs as if it were nothing and swallows confidently, “You’d do the same for me.” _And I did_. _Twice_. It stays silent for a long time, Jackie laying lateral in the bed directly beside you without moving a muscle. Even from here you could hear the crank of the gears in his head shifting about in the cavity of his skull and his heart forces a tick in your chest.

          Eventually you have to say something. “You should not be here,” and you cannot even admit that you would rather not be alone right no. For once, all you wanted was a voice.

          Jackie snapped his head towards you and crossed his arms behind his head. “I may not agree with you,” he scoffed, “but nobody deserves to go through this alone.” You’ve let your guard down because you can sense the tight tension in your muscles calming now. The string winding you up was becoming unraveled in a quick, dramatic pull. “Between Jimmy,” he paused to take a sigh before continuing, “and Piers, and… Jochen.” Immediately you clench your fists and allow the sheets to ravel in your fingers. You have to remind yourself: _not another single person knows about what I had for him_. You tuck this secret back into your inner coat pocket and decide not to tell him just yet. “Of course… Francois.” The soft lift of his voice was comforting but deep. Your fingers twitch as if begging for a cigarette to be stuffed between the grip. “Somehow,” Jackie started, “You managed to become the only driver Jochen did not like.”

          It is funny, the way that these things work out. You are so utterly despised by the first person you loved. “It was a show for me,” you admit and your voice sounds tired as if weighed by possibilities, “I never hated Jochen.” _Quite the contrary_. “He loved you,” Jackie rose a brow on his forehead. “Francois,” you clarify, putting an arm to cradle the back of your neck, “he loved you.” But you say this so easily as if it never meant a thing at all. As if you didn’t ever love him. And you did, you did so very much. Suddenly blue eyes are flooding your thoughts and you rub your eyes as if to disrupt the memories provoked there. That's why these things hurt, you knew it would happen. Just as a bouquet of roses, even the most beautiful things are destined to wilt. 

          Jackie understand somehow. You comprehend this because suddenly he is still, his fingers aren’t tapping on the comforter and he isn’t drumming the sole of his foot on the floor. “He told me one night.” That was the night he kissed you, you realize. Francois with his eyes red, pressed tightly shut, his hands to eagar on your inner thigh and his lips traveling over the column of your neck. You take the piano keys beneath your fingers and his teeth grazed your veins as though choosing between kissing you and killing you. Perhaps, in the end, it was truly both.

          “We were sleeping together.” Suddenly even the Scot’s breath is concave and absent as if he had the life stolen from his beating, pulsing lungs. “Francois and I,” you blink slowly, “we were sleeping together.” But it wasn’t just that. The first few times, sure, it was sex and nothing time altering. It was after he searched into your eyes and stared at the darkest part of yourself while he was over you, now that , when he did that he was making love. It was simple to explain it as that and just that. But, isn’t the truth. You wait for him to say something after the duration of reticence.

          Jackie thickly took this in as if the truth or realization was sliding down the narrow column of his throat. “It is strange that I never realized as you were with me after the crash how sad your eyes were,” he sighed.

 _Jacky, why are they sad?_ You remember that. Ronnie.

          “You were more important than what I was feeling. According to everyone, I feel things less than other people”

          “But it’s not true,” Jackie sat up and stretched his legs, raking over you, “You feel them more deeply than anyone else.” You shift your head, “Baby-face, you simply have a better way of hiding it than others.” You never thought of it this way. “So what is it?”, he asked. “What is it about Ronnie that finally made your iron skin rivet apart?”

          “Because…”, your eyes are shutting and suddenly you are completely relaxed. All burdens have been risen from your mind. He wants you to speak the consigned words that you have pressed to the folds of your heart. “Of everyone I have ever loved he was the only one who managed to read my soul.”

          Jackie allowed this phrase to color his mind, “You loved him.” His shoulders fell and he blinked as if he’d been unnerved, “ _By god_ , more than anything, _you loved him_.”

          “Mario is more important,” you reply as much as this hurts you, “they were best friends--it matters more than myself.”

          Your counter has an agitated expression on their face as if you’ve just said something to offend them but you know they are simply in serious thought. “Do you ever listen to yourself?”, Jackie shook his head and sat up straighter. You open your eyes and look at him. “You are sitting here sulking and pretending that you never gave a damn about Ronnie, about Francois or Jochen or _anyone_.” Usually your temper would allow you to react but you’re too weak. You allow yourself to fall back onto the pillow because it is true. You’d rather pretend to of not cared than cared at all because if you say you cared, then you will have to grieve as someone who cared does. As much as it will kill you and slice up little pieces of yourself. No matter what. “In an effort to be selfless, Ickx, you are only being selfish.”

          The word leapt up and slapped you across the cheek. You have the tear of a ring over your skin and swear there may be a mark or shadow of this sentence over your sheath. “Stop," you gasp, "please.” it is all you say and it trembles louder than a thousand strung together.

          Jackie doubletakes. The mattress creaks under his weight as he slides off the bed. It is penetrative, the tight tension between the two of you. “I’m sorry, I stepped out of line.” He reaches to gather his coat to place between a bent elbow. You feel the emptiness, like the night sky with the moon folded and the stars plucked from the inky darkness above. He is about to leave when you grab him back in his tracks.

          “But you’re right.” Your voice sounds weightless like a child’s and you cannot comprehend what are saying before it leaves your mouth. The edges of your eyes begin to sting and you choke on your words. You fumble with a twisted tongue, struggle to spit out the right lines. “You’re right.”

          How would Jochen see it, knowing that when he pressed his hand into yourself that it was ignored.

          How would Francois react, knowing the last words he ever wrote were nearly forgotten.

          How would Ronnie feel, knowing that last silent communication was taken for granted.

          All of them. They set you alight in your heart and mind. It was the most beautiful chaos, everything that they came with. All the pain, grief and worry, it was everything. In the whole wide world, there is nothing more desperate than a human being who has lost a love. You hate how you have your knees curled around your head and you cannot breath. How an unsummoned well of emotion is clouding your throat. Trembling, your ribs rattling together and caging your fragile lungs. You are pursing your eyes shut, as you do this, as you sob on top of the bed all by yourself. Bubbles, wells and tides and swelling and pressing up in your stomach. It is coming out so forcefully that the room is echoing, it goes on for so long that you cannot sense any part of your body. You allow light to fade in and out of the room with noticing. They were never the ones who destroyed you; you did it to yourself by loving them. A hand slides over your back, rubs into your skin as you are bent like a lame flower. It was endless, the hiatus in numb expressions.

          “You will have nights where you curse the stars and that is okay.”

_We both have, haven’t we?_

          Your face is buried in Jackie’s neck, he’s holding you to his chest, wrapping his arms over you on the bed in the room. In an effort to feel nothing, you only allowed yourself to feel everything. In the end, of all the years, you’ve never experienced greater silence, larger storms or stronger emotions in your life. You have to remember, you did it to yourself. _You did it to yourself_. All you wanted was someone to sit in the vastness of your soul and kindle the unquenchable fires within you. You sit for several hours battling yourself.

          “Don’t forget how he loved you.”

          You won’t, you promise. You are whispering, held like a baby in another’s arms. You recognize that if given the chance, you would not of left Ronnie alone beneath all the stars on that night when he last saw the moon and neither of you realize that it was his last. Your fingers press into his arm.

          “Please,” you beg, “Jackie, don’t go.”

          Jackie nods in response and pulls you a little closer. He doesn't leave. This was all that you needed, after all this time, someone to show that they care without forgetting all the dark corners of your mind. You are tired of feeling lost and alone. _Please, hold me close, show me I am more than what I feel_. 

          In the silence of still breathing night and hearts beating with whispered lines, it played a melody that you couldn’t sing. You can’t remember what it was like before the first one, you still don’t understand how you have gotten yourself here. Maybe that’s exactly what you desired. Someone who could cause you to forget where you came from. Someone who could allow you to love with knowing how to fall.

          Following this, you stare out the window into the morning glow and imagine the drop below. You also study the colors of your sky as they paint your cheeks. Your eyes shut and you allow the sun to slide across your hair in the cold morning. On your shoulders are his kisses and over the beds of your wrists are the veins that traveled just for them. Over you, everywhere and in everything, they are with you. As the heavens slid across your collarbone, you sigh because you can feel his warm touch soaking into your skin. Something stops you from going closer to the light. He taught you how to love again, didn’t he? Let you experience something you never believed was real? There isn’t any use in whispering three words they already know you have to say. Your eyes part, the lavender on the horizon is mingling delicately with a bronze of the softest hue. You can't help thinking how much he would love to see this. Your lips are trembling as you speak to him in distance without a break in your melody.

          “Thank you, Ronnie.”

          You swear you can sense the light of his smile as it splits the clouds and splashes over your skin. He knew that you were lost in the world somehow, the both of you were wonderfully lost together. It was the chaos you discovered in each other. Only that makes all the difference in the world. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading the series (if you did). I hope you enjoyed it! Leave a comment if you did, if you have to contact me get on Tumblr and hit me up on either @sonofhistory or @pieregasly


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